AIG Execs Enjoy Sun and Fun on Your Dime

Posted on Oct 8, 2008

What’s $85 billion if you don’t get to spend it? Just days after taxpayers saved AIG from ruin, executives of the insurance giant spent $440,000 pampering themselves at the exclusive St. Regis resort in Monarch Beach, Calif.

That bill will essentially be passed on to the taxpayer, argued Rep. Elijah Cummings, who—along with Rep. Henry Waxman, Barack Obama and others—has called for the person or persons responsible to be fired.

Guardian:

The House oversight committee, which is investigating the company’s problems, confronted AIG executives with an invoice from the St Regis resort in Monarch Beach, south of Los Angeles, detailing an eight-day company event which began five days after the rescue.

“Average Americans are suffering economically,” said Henry Waxman, chairman of the committee. “They are losing their jobs, their homes and their health insurance. Yet less than one week after the taxpayers rescued AIG, company executives could be found wining and dining at one of the most exclusive resorts in the nation.”

The bill shows that AIG spent $139,375 on rooms, $147,301 on “banquets”, $23,380 on spa treatments and $6,939 on golf at an eight-day company event which began on September 22.

“US taxpayers will be, in effect, paying for this,” said Elijah Cummings, another Democrat, who demanded to know who was responsible for the outlay. “I think that person ought to be fired.”